- guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 16 May 2001 02.41 BST
Speaking a day after a furious row left Madrid at odds with several other EU members, Anna Lindh said that Sweden - currently running the EU's rotating presidency - hopes to issue a precise target date for the entry of east European newcomers at the Gothenburg summit next month.
"It is because we are much closer to enlargement that we are having a heated debate," she told the Guardian before another day of talks - this time with colleagues from the 12 candidate countries. "We can't just expect to hear beautiful speeches."
But after her discussion with the candidates group it was announced that the round of talks with them schedule for Friday had been put back to June 1.
"This is not a setback for the enlargement process," Ms Lindh told a press conference. "It is a technical problem, not a political problem." Some diplomats were reported as disputing that.
Ms Lindh, renowned for her Scandinavian cool, was outraged in recent days when Spain indicated that the price for its endorsement of a deal on free movement of labour in the EU for new members would be a guarantee that it would go on receiving generous amounts of regional aid after enlargement.
Worried at being swamped by cheap east European labour, the Germans and Austrians want a transition period of several years before citizens of any new member state can work freely in the existing 15 EU countries. The same provision was imposed when Spain and Portugal joined the union.
EU "structural funds" go to the union's poorer countries, but Spain, a notoriously tough fighter for its interests, is worried that when the easterners join, its funds will fall.
"It is irresponsible to link these kind of questions," the Swedish minister insisted. "They [Madrid's negotiators] claim they won't make a formal linkage and I hope they will prove in the coming days that they are not going to."
On another sensitive issue, there could be no guarantee that Poland, the largest applicant, will be in the first wave of entrants. "You have to treat them by the book," she said, "and that means countries that are ready first should be able to join first".
Ms Lindh acknowledges that euroscepticism is rising in candidate countries from the former communist bloc where adjustment to EU economic and legal standards has brought pain but, so far, little gain.
It is paradoxical, she agrees, that sceptical Swedes, like the British government, are keen to expand the membership of a club many in the populace do not want to be in. Like Tony Blair, her social democratic prime minister, Goran Persson, will have to make a crucial decision on holding a referendum on joining the European single currency.
Diplomats say Ms Lindh's Nordic briskness has been useful in cementing the EU's emerging common foreign and security policies.
